The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

at home using instructions from a Scientific American do-it-yourself article, and both Russian
and American scientists had managed to grow HeLa in space.
Henrietta’s cells went up in the second satellite ever in orbit, which was launched by the
Russian space program in 1960, and almost immediately afterward, NASA shot several vials
of HeLa into space in the Discoverer XVIII satellite. Researchers knew from simulated zero-
gravity studies using animals that space travel could cause cardiovascular changes, degrada-
tion of bone and muscle, and a loss of red blood cells. They also knew radiation levels were
higher beyond the ozone layer. But they didn’t know what effects any of this would have on
humans: Would it cause cellular changes, or even cell death?
When the first humans went into orbit, Henrietta’s cells went with them so researchers
could study the effects of space travel, as well as the nutritional needs of cells in space, and
how cancerous and noncancerous cells responded differently to zero gravity. What they found
was disturbing: in mission after mission, noncancerous cells grew normally in orbit, but HeLa
became more powerful, dividing faster with each trip.
And HeLa cells weren’t the only ones behaving strangely. Since the start of the decade,
researchers had been noticing two new things about all cultured cells. First, it seemed that all
normal cells growing in culture eventually died or underwent spontaneous transformation and
became cancerous. This phenomenon was exciting for researchers trying to understand the
mechanisms of cancer, because it suggested that they might be able to study the moment a
normal cell becomes malignant. But it was disturbing for those trying to use cell culture to de-
velop medical therapies.
George Hyatt, a Navy doctor working with the National Cancer Institute, had experienced
this phenomenon firsthand. He’d cultured human skin cells for treating badly burned soldiers,
then created a wound on a young volunteer officer’s arm and smeared the cells across it,
hoping they’d grow to form a new layer of skin. If it worked, it might mean doctors could use
skin-cell transplants to treat wounds in the field. The cells did grow, but when Hyatt biopsied
them a few weeks later, they were all cancerous. He panicked, removed the cells, and hadn’t
tried transplanting skin cells since.
The other unusual thing scientists had noticed about cells growing in culture was that once
they transformed and became cancerous, they all behaved alike—dividing identically and pro-
ducing exactly the same proteins and enzymes, even though they’d all produced different
ones before becoming malignant. Lewis Coriell, a renowned cell culturist, thought he might
have an explanation. He published a paper suggesting that perhaps “transformed” cells be-
haved the same not because they’d become cancerous, but because they’d been contamin-
ated by something—most likely a virus or bacterium—that made them behave similarly. Al-
most as an aside, he pointed out one possibility that other researchers hadn’t considered: all